Of all the mysterious figures of the Cold War, Wolfgang Vogel was one of the most legendary. An immaculately dressed, unfailingly meticulous East German lawyer, Vogel moved effortlessly through the Iron Curtain, and masterfully manipulated the back-channel world of spy trading and other covert deals between East and West. In a book that may be among the most important to emerge from the ashes of Communism, veteran New York Times correspondent Craig R. Whitney uses Vogel's secretive career to create a fascinating, unique view of the Cold War - the forces that created it, ended it, and ultimately made Wolfgang Vogel a pariah in the new era that followed.

Spy Trader goes behind the scenes of the most dramatic international incidents of the last forty years: showdowns at the Berlin Wall; clandestine spy swaps at the famous Glienicke Bridge; and twenty-five years of secret releases of political prisoners from East Germany in exchange for billions of dollars in cash and goods from Bonn. In this book Vogel, who was at the center of it all, goes public for the first time with the full story of his negotiations with the United States and West Germany, with the East German secret police, and with the Soviet KGB on scores of cases from Colonel Rudolf Abel and Francis Gary Powers in 1962 to Anatoly Shcharansky in 1986. Spy Trader also reveals the political and social double life of the divided Germany - the questionable ethics, moral compromises, and self-deceptions that both sides, East and West, indulged in for more than forty years. Vogel's career embodies Germany's dilemma, and Whitney brings to life all its contradictions and nuances.

Through the lives of Vogel and scores of other unforgettable characters - CIA agents, KGB operatives, arms dealers, defectors, and dissidents who were among Vogel's thousands of clients - Spy Trader illuminates the Cold War in all of its harsh and compelling reality.